Lord Ashcroft's GOP Diary

Throughout this week Lord Ashcroft has been submitting a diary from Tampa, Florida where the Republicans met to nominate Mitt Romney for the US Presidency.

The final night of the Convention, and the last big chance to
introduce Mitt Romney to the nation. In advance of his speech, Olympians, members
of the church of which he was pastor, and former colleagues vouched sturdily,
and sometimes movingly, for the Governor's character and competence. Tom
Stemberg, the founder of Staples (in which Romney's company, Bain Capital,
invested), said he was well qualified to control government spending: when he first told Mitt about his plan for a chain
of office supply stores "he got really excited about the idea of saving a
few cents on paper clips". Clint Eastwood was a popular choice as the
surprise special guest. People think Hollywood types are all "left of
Lenin", he said, but there were some Republicans too: "they just
don't go round hotdoggin' it".

***

With RNC Chairman Reince Priebus

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, whom I
had met a few months ago and briefed on the state of British politics, invited
me to watch the acceptance speech from his skybox. It will soon be clear how
far Romney's performance has gone to establishing himself in the public mind as
something other than (as one insider put it) "John Kerry without the
medals". Romney's best lines contrasted his own approach with that of his
opponent: "President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and
heal the planet. [Pause for prolonged laughter]. My promise is to help you and
your family". Republican strategists anticipate only a small bounce in the
polls, but expect the jobs figures out at the end of next week to neutralise
whatever small gains Obama could expect from his own Convention.

Throughout this week Lord Ashcroft will be submitting a diary from Tampa, Florida where the Republicans are meeting to nominate Mitt Romney for the US Presidency.

The thing
that makes this election so hard to call is that according to historical
precedent, neither candidate can possibly win. Presidents do not get re-elected
when their job approval is as low, and unemployment is as high, as it is for
Obama. But challengers do not win when their personal negatives are as high as
Romney's. Another yardstick it at hand. Since 1964, with one exception in
Michael Dukakis, the victor has been the candidate who led in the Gallup poll
100 days before election day. So who was it, Obama or Romney? It was a tie: 46%
to 46%.

***

Given the
state of the economy and the disappointment with the President's record, says
Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report, Romney ought to be
comfortably five points ahead. Romney himself is the main reason why this is
not the case: "He has a keen analytical mind, you can see why he is one of
the top corporate problem solvers. At the same time, if he had taken one of those
Myers Briggs tests, I don't know that it would have suggested he go into
politics". In addition, while the party's potential supporters have always
divided between "country club Republicans" and "truck stop
Republicans", the Democrats' greater appeal among white collar classes
means there are now more of the latter, while Romney is naturally one
of the former.

***

If Romney is
largely a blank slate in the public mind, the same is even more true of Paul
Ryan. As his speech on Wednesday night showed, he is tremendously popular with
activists, but they are the only ones who know anything about him outside his
Wisconsin Congressional district. Republicans here say his selection as the
Vice Presidential nominee shows the seriousness of Romney's candidacy. With
echoes of George W. Bush's choice of Dick Cheney in 2000, the decision seems to
have been taken with an eye to governing at least as much as for what he can
bring to the campaign. Ryan's case against Obama was that he had wasted
borrowed money trying to create a culture of entitlement: the President wants
"a country where everything is free but us".

Throughout this week Lord Ashcroft will be submitting a diary from Tampa, Florida where the Republicans are meeting to nominate Mitt Romney for the US Presidency.

It seems surprising at first that so many in Romney's team have told us that the purpose of this Convention is to introduce their candidate to the American people. With ten weeks to go, should they not have done that already? Sensibly, most Americans do not pay any more attention to politics than they have to – only the partisans know much about him. To most others, he is just a rich Mormon. So far, concedes Neil Newhouse, Romney's pollster, "the Obama campaign has done a better job of defining Mitt Romney than we've done ourselves". This helps to explain why, despite a strong lead on the economy and the deficit, Romney is not yet winning. Unusually for a politician, the Governor dislikes talking about himself: "he wasn't brought up that way".

***

Much of the job of introducing Mitt falls to his family. His wife Ann addressed the Convention on Tuesday night. A leader's wife speaking about her husband seems a very American phenomenon, though of course Sarah Brown introduced the practice in Britain. It is hard to imagine a British political spouse beginning as Ann did, however: "tonight, I want to talk to you about love". She did well, though I am sure many would be dubious about the effectiveness of this sort of thing. It also contained a nugget for enthusiasts of political trivia: "some of you may not know this, but I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner". Only some of us?

Throughout this week Lord Ashcroft will be submitting a diary from Tampa, Florida where the Republicans are meeting to nominate Mitt Romney for the US Presidency.

American political conventions may be show business on a gigantic scale – there are 50,000 delegates in Tampa, with the biggest international press corps for any event outside the Olympics – but they matter. They offer the biggest single chance for a candidate, particularly the challenger, to make his mark and present himself to the voters. For Mitt Romney a huge amount is at stake. A widespread view among the professionals here in Tampa is that with President Obama’s approval ratings in only the mid-40s, the voters are open to change; the question in their mind is whether the alternative on offer is acceptable. This carries echoes of the 2010 election in Britain – reminding people it is time for change is one thing; showing the change they want is the change you are offering is another thing altogether.

***

The decision to cancel the first day of the Convention because of the weather was probably right, given the risks if the tropical storm making its way across the Gulf had hit Tampa as feared. That will be little comfort to the Republican Party, which now has to squeeze the maximum value out of the remaining three days. In any event, the Convention is now “split-screen” news – TV discussion of the Republican agenda is accompanied by graphics showing the progress of the storm towards Louisiana, on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.